BiffVernon Blogspot

Thursday, October 22, 2015

The Graph that Matters II

Last month I wrote a short piece about the graph of global surface temperatures to August 2015 showing just how much warmer this year has been so far than any other year since thermometers were invented (and several thousand years before that too).I wrote then that "This is the graph that should have every politician going OMG WTF and be front page news everywhere, but outside the world of climate geeks it's been pretty much ignored."

The bad news is that I was right; the graph was pretty much ignored. The worse news is that the graph has now been updated to include September and the 2015 line, already way over any previous year, is still rising.

This week the climate talkers in Bonn wend their convoluted way on the road towards Paris but still there is an air of unreality. People are still talking about 2° as if it's a worthwhile target to keep below but ignore the inconvenient truths that 2° will be really bad in all sorts of ways in all sorts of places, that the IPCC calculations only give a two thirds chance of keeping below 2° if the emission targets are met and that the uncertainties in the global climate models are such that reality will probably turn out worse than the scenarios suggest.

Importantly, the INDCs, the key tool for COP21, just don't add up to the 2° they're aiming for. But what they should be aiming for is a global warming limited to 1.5° (and even then there will be more than enough adaptation to cope with). So what emissions reductions are needed to achieve this relatively safe scenario?

Fortunately Aubrey Meyer has been crunching the numbers and come up with the definitive diagrams.

and

As the second diagram suggests a 15 years Emergency Transition is needed, yet nobody is talking about such a thing.

Let's repeat that in case you missed it. We need a 15 years Emergency Transition, starting now and getting to as near as dammit zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 if our children and grandchildren are going to inherit a planet worth its name.

Friday, October 02, 2015

Syria Re-visited

A couple of years ago, in the summer of 2013, I wrote a series of pieces for my blog investigating the part that climate change had to play in the origins of the civil war. A great deal has been written on the subject since then that confirms my initial thoughts. Now someone well known outside climate science community has raised the issue and people are talking about it. For their various or nefarious reasons some will deny the connection, but they are wrong.Here's what Charlotte Church had to say, reported in The Huffington Post.To save folk looking up what I wrote back then, I've gathered the pieces together and re-posted them below:

Is the Syrian conflict a climate war?

The issue of water does not feature much in discussions on Syria but water shortage and a perceived unfairness in water distribution was one of the original triggers to the uprising a couple of years ago, though it's now been overtaken by all sorts piling into the scrum.

It's a fairly arid area with a growing population and growing demand for irrigation. Much of the water is supplied by rivers that start in other countries, Turkey and Lebanon, and flow to other countries, Iraq, Jordon and Israel. Some of the catchment, the Golan Height, has been occupied by Israel since 1967. Groundwater is being abstracted much faster than replenishment. There have been several drought years, particularly in the north and east of Syria. Global warming is likely to cause climate change towards less rainfall in the region and recent droughts may be the start of worse to come.

If there's one place where war will be triggered by water this is it. Or maybe this was it.

DEIR EZ ZOUR, 17 February 2010 (IRIN) - Drought in eastern and northeastern Syria has driven some 300,000 families to urban settlements such as Aleppo, Damascus and Deir ez Zour in search of work in one of the largest internal displacements in the Middle East in recent years.

The country’s agriculture sector, which until recently employed 40 percent of Syria’s workforce and accounted for 25 percent of gross domestic product, has been hit badly, but farmers themselves are worst affected, say aid officials.

In some villages, up to 50 percent of the population has left for nearby cities.

Note the date - 17 February 2010. Mass migration of rural population forced by drought into cities such as Aleppo, scene of the latest atrocities. Without water, unable to grow crops, the cattle dead, uprooted to the city, is it any wonder that folk find scapegoats, religions and causes?For a recent update see Peter Gleick's piece Syria, Water, Climate Change, and Violent Conflict

Part 2

Winter precipitation trends in the Mediterranean region for the period 1902 - 2010.

Part 3

Further Reading

In the previous two posts about the Syrian conflict I have suggested that the roots of the disaster lie in climate change. A key feature of the current coverage of the reporting on the conflict is the absence of consideration of the origins, particularly any reference to global warming. Global policy decisions are being made with reference to symptoms not causes.

It turns out that there is an extensive literature relating what may be the Fertile Crescent's worst drought since the Neolithic to man-made climate change. Importantly, warnings were made of social unrest and military conflict that would be the likely consequences if the effects of the drought were not mitigated. These warnings were issued in timely manner but, at least to any meaningful extent, were left unheeded, action not taken.

I list below a selection of reading, from short blog-pieces and journalists' reports to academic papers and lengthy reports from international organisations.